Enough sleep vital to healthy growth of young children

A survey of 10,000 children aged between 3 and 6 years old in Shanghai shows they sleep 9.06 hours every day on average, lower than the national average and the minimum health standard of 10 hours. Gmw.cn comments:

Comparing the data with others shows an even worse tendency. The average sleeping time of preschoolage children in 12 provincial-level regions was above 11 hours in 2006, but another survey shows the sleeping time of preschool-age children in 10 cities dropped to 9.57 hours in 2015.

That should arouse national attention because sleeping is of the utmost importance to the healthy growth of preschool-age children. If they fail to have enough sleep, their development might be affected.

And the cause of the decline in the number of hours youngsters sleep is obvious: their academic burden. According to reports, it is common for preschool-age children in cities to receive extracurricular training after they finish kindergarten. In some cases, the children even have to go to bed at around 10 pm and get up at 7 am.

The majority of parents know the importance of sleep, but they worry their children might be left behind in the competition if they don't do the extracurricular lessons. That is an anxiety that is common in today's society, which is highly competitive.

Such anxiety is understandable, but it is better not to transfer it to children. Every parent hopes their children will have a good life, but that goal should not be realized by depriving the children of their sleep. On the contrary, if children are given too much pressure, they might become less tolerant and less patient when growing up.